Homosexual activist Wayne Besen is shown here yelling into the window of Boston's Park Street Church with a bullhorn. He and other "queer" activists were protesting the church for hosting a conference about helping homosexuals leave that lifestyle.

UPDATE: homosexual and anti-ex-gay activist Wayne Besen, who is a serious candidate for AFTAH’s Gay Grinch 2009 award, is upset at our article below. Besen exposes his anti-religious bigotry by ridiculing our “knuckle-dragging worldview” (it’s called the historic Judeo-Christian tradition, Wayne). Yet he doesn’t get the irony of being the guy who complains about persecution and intolerance while hatefully harassing Christians and returning again and again to vicious ad hominem smears of opponents (e.g., “Porno Pete”). Bullies don’t make good human rights advocates. — Peter LaBarbera, www.aftah.org

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Voters Have a Right to Know if a Candidate Practices Homosexuality

By Peter LaBarbera

Folks, it’s the holiday season, but it’s also the political season, and in every election run-up, we get information about candidates who are suspected — or widely rumored, especially in “gay” circles — to be practicing homosexuals (ie., practicing homosexual behavior; we don’t use the term “orientation” at AFTAH). Usually it’s a call from the opponent’s side who is outraged that the other guy is “gay” and yet not revealing that to the general public. Often the accused candidate is outwardly pro-family.

My position and that of Americans For Truth has been clear: voters have a right to know if a politician or candidate is practicing homosexuality (or any other sexual sin) or is deeply sympathetic to same.

Do voters have a right to know that their Congressman — especially one that bills himself as “pro-family” — is having adulterous affairs with women? Yes. Do the same voters have a right to know if their Congressman is himself a homosexual — especially since he will likely be voting on “gay”-related legislation predicated on the (false) assumption that homosexuality is a “civil rights” criterion? You bet they do.

In this post-Will & Grace age in which vulgar sodomy jokes are aired uncensored on primetime TV, it is unfair, hypocritical and simply odd to enable homosexual candidates to hide their pet sexual sin behind the “gay” “closet” — or to demand that any questions on the topic are inappropriate. I write this as one who has hoped for the defeat of Republican “pro-family” politicians who were exposed as philanderers.

So our question to any candidate around which “gay” rumors are swirling is this:

Are you a homosexual — i.e., have you practiced homosexual behavior or been in a “gay” relationship?

There is no easy way to ask this awkward question, but it is as relevant as asking a candidate rumored to be a cad if he has been faithful to his wife. From a Christian perspective, sexual sin is sexual sin, and the politics of homosexuality and “outing” should not be dictated by the needs and wants of pro-homosexuality advocates or the GLBT Lobby.

The problems and ethical implications of secretly “gay” politicians are also exacerbated by the policy of homosexual activist “outers” like Mike Rogers who specialize in exposing the homosexuality only of candidates they regard as hypocritical on homosexual issues (read: secretly homosexual politicians who oppose the homosexual agenda). This creates an incentive for covertly homosexual pols to vote pro-”gay” on GLBT legislation because that will lessen the likelihood of an embarrassing “outing” episode.

This is another reason why voters deserve to know if their representative or potential representative has a conflict of interest on homosexuality issues.

If you are a Republican and you think it’s unfair for homosexual politicians to have their homosexuality revealed, here’s three words for you: Mark Foley scandal. As one who monitors the “gay” press, I knew about Foley’s homosexuality years before the page scandal happened (I knew nothing of Foley’s interest in young male pages, only that it was an open secret that he was homosexual.) Had GOP leaders not swept that under the rug, perhaps the whole sordid Foley episode could have been avoided, with all its bad consequences for the Republican Party in the 2006 elections.

Any candidate hit with the “gay” question can simply answer my question above. We hope they wouldn’t lie about it, but that seems to have happened with one Republican candidate in Illinois (State Sen. Dan Rutherford, a Republican who cast a key vote for a homosexual special-rights bill) –whom I sought answers from on the homosexual issue. We’ll have much more on this later, but for now our suggestion is this

Activists/media: ask the politician the H-question as forthrightly as possible if it becomes an issue; Politicians: answer it truthfully.